Ascended, get your balloon-popping shoes and PA building plans ready– RIFT 2.2 and this year’s Carnival of the Ascended World Event are right around the corner! Trion announced today that the patch will land next week on February 27th. RIFT’s second anniversary is coming up and that means that all of the fun mini-games, things to see, and rewards will be returning from last year– along with some new games and goodies taking place in Storm Legion zones this year.

There will be two new games and pie-throwing seems to be involved in one of them. Anything involving pies has to be good, right? As part of RIFT’s second anniversary, Ascendants will be able to pick up a special anniversary cloak. There will also be a new Carnival-specific alternate Codex Warfront to enjoy that involves a bit of luck in the Wheel of Fate and a collection of corresponding achievements that are currently being previewed on the Public Test Server.

RIFT 2.2 will also finally be bringing us our third tier of Planar Attunement that will include these nodes as well as new weapon enchant nodes that were recently added. We’ll also be getting the second tier for the PvP Planar Attunement tree. We’ll be getting a new Steppes of Infinity zone event, too.

Trion announced that RIFT will be holding another Return to Telara free event from March 21 to March 25. During the anniversary week of RIFT (March 21 through April 4), subscribers will receive special bonuses for XP, PA XP, Guild XP, planarite, zone event rewards, favor, and more. Check out the official announcement for all the details.

SOULS

CLERIC

INQUISITOR
* Vex: Reduced mana cost.

MAGE

ELEMENTALIST
* Summon: Greater Air Elemental: The ability description for the top two ranks no longer claim that the pet is capped to level 27.

SOULS

CLERIC

INQUISITOR
* Nysyr’s Rebuke: Damage reduced.
* Scourge, Vex: Damage increased.
* Spiritual Scrutiny: Now a 1-hour buff. Reduced the armor and resistance penetration it grants to 20%. Now reduces the casting time of Bolt of Judgment by 1.5 seconds.

JUSTICAR
* Mien of Leadership: Increases threat generation by 200%, down from 350%.
* Increased the base threat generated by Justicar melee abilities.

Trion Worlds is starting to become quite the ambitious MMOG developer, producer, and publishing company. In a very awesome move to most fans of RIFT and Trion and SyFy’s upcoming DEFIANCE project, Trion announced yesterday that they are teaming up with XLGAMES to bring the hugely ambitious, sandbox-style Eastern MMORPG ArcheAge to Western audiences. Trion will become the localized publisher for the game. No release dates or beta dates are known yet, but Trion does have a placeholder website in place already.

Now, if you haven’t heard much about ArcheAge yet, it’s showing a lot of promise in Korea, mainly due to the ways in which players will be able to participate in a wide variety of innovative, open activities. We’re talking in-game gems like naval combat, the ability to build your own ships and housing, large-scale PvP siege combat, an arena system, aerial gliding, and customized pet, farming, and judicial systems. If you’d like to find out more about the game, XLGAMES has a few video trailers available on the current ArcheAge site.

The official press release for the announcement can be found on Trion’s website.

GENERAL
* PTS ONLY: Added sub-30% hitpoint dummies to the Dummy Foundry.
* Tier 2 PvP Planar Attunement is now available.
* Increased Planar Attunement level cap to 1072.
* PA: Swift Saddle Planar Attunements now function as expected!
* Fixed a whole bunch of artifact locations that were unreachable due to ground or other objects!

Many members of the RIFT community waited apprehensively yesterday for Daglar’s second half of 2013′s State of the Game letter. After Scott Hartsman’s sudden departure from Trion Worlds, some were afraid that news of the coming year would be sprinkled with hints of free-to-play. Instead, we received a brief letter from Daglar in which he thanked RIFT’s community and expressed enthusiasm over the months of updates to come.

Specifically, he talked about what we’ll be seeing in RIFT 2.2 and 2.3. In 2.2, we’ll finally be getting the third tier for Planar Attunement, new zone events on the Storm Legion continents, and our first Storm Legion raid Hard Modes. An updated Carnival of the Ascended will also be making a return, marking RIFT’s second anniversary. Not much is known about the 2.3 update yet, but Daglar did throw out a pretty big hint– it involves the opening of Dendrome!

Keep reading to take a look.

A rather large bombshell was dropped during yesterday’s first half of RIFT’s second annual State of the Game address (also known as Producer’s Letter). Scott Hartsman, who has been the Executive Producer for RIFT since the beginning, is stepping down from the position and leaving Trion. He left Dahanese with this letter for the RIFT community:

I wanted to let you know that I’m stepping down from my position here at Trion. It’s been an amazing time, working with some of the best developers anywhere, getting the company’s first game off the ground, taking it all the way through a multitude of amazing updates, then to Storm Legion, and even a little bit beyond.

And I’ll still see you in RIFT.
Scott Hartsman

Daglar will be finishing off the continuation of the Producer’s Letter later today, where we’ll undoubtedly find out more about what Trion has in store for us in the coming year. Best of luck to Scott Hartsman in his future endeavors. He’ll be missed.

Some of the below notes may already be present on Live shards – these haven’t gotten a final edit but I went for speed since there are class changes included that are now on PTS.

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GENERAL
* Cache Finder guild perk now works with Infinity Stones, Frozen Eclipse Stones, and Empyrean Stones.
* Dimensions: Using ‘Duplicate’ to place Dimension items will now use objects in your storage crate before those in your inventory.
* Augment Wardstone and Bless Wardstone abilities have been replaced by Nexus Infusion, which is now granted to all characters. Wardstones that were previously upgraded using these abilities now work with Nexus Infusion instead.
* Characters now start with a skill of 1 in Fishing and Survival. Existing characters who don’t already have these skills will gain the base 1 point on next login.
* Racial Abilities: Dwarven racial ability, Density, has been removed. Replaced with Second Breakfast – Restores 8% health and mana per second over 13 seconds.
* All Spell and Melee Critical Hit Chance items have gotten an upgrade.
* Increased kill counts for guild PvP quests, but reduced the number of Warfront victories required.
* Fixed an issue with guild renaming and guild dimension names.
* Randomly-generated items of the ‘Wraithful’ type are now named Wrathful.

This coming weekend, December 14th through 18th, Trion will be showcasing RIFT Patch 2.1 and Storm Legion for free. Former subscribers will be able to explore all of the content of Storm Legion without purchasing the expansion, and prospective players will be able to experience some of the new additions to RIFT, including dimensions and the newly-arrived Fae Yule holiday event.

Storm Legion has already been called a “truly inspiring,” “gold standard” expansion with “by far the most innovative housing system in the genre.” Try it free from Dec. 14-18 when you join the Ascended in a march on the forces of Air and Death! Former subscribers can dive deep into Storm Legion with no restrictions, while anyone, including RIFT Lite players, can celebrate a huge new Fae Yule World Event and build in private or public, personal or guild Dimensions.

For more information, see Trion’s official announcement.

Regulos is coming, and he has a colossal, annihilating axe to grind with the Ascended. Starting Dec. 12, raiders can face off with the Destroyer in a 20-player raid that spans the planes of existence.

The new raid included in RIFT 2.1, Eternal Eclipse, chronicles the Queen of Storms’ flight from Frozen Tempest and pits Ascended against Regulos at the threshold of Telara. While celebrating victories against the Storm Legion during festive Fae Yule, players will be tasked with the unimaginable – journeying to the Plane of Death and claiming final victory against the Destroyer himself.